Best YouTube to MP4 Converter for Mac - Airy

Airy

YouTube’s supremacy among video hosting web services is undisputable. This is the web site where not only you can find pretty much any video you need, but also create and upload your own video, and it will reach an audience of millions. YouTube is far and away the most popular video sharing web service and its popularity keeps increasing till now.

However there is one thing most of us would want to improve about the service – you can upload a video to YouTube, but downloading one seems to be a bit of a problem. YouTube does not offer you an option to do so. Forget about more exotic formats, wouldn’t you be happy to save your favorite video in MP4 at least? This is perhaps the most commonly used format for storing audio and video and streaming over Internet. Once you download MP4 from YouTube, Mac media player can play it back anywhere anytime regardless your Internet connection.

So how do we convert YouTube to MP4, Mac users might ask. If you go online and start searching for ‘YouTube MP4 downloader Mac’ or ‘YouTube MP4 converter Mac’, you get many results. A lot of standalone apps, web services, etc. position themselves as ‘YouTube MP4 converter’ Mac owners could use. So many, in fact, that you might feel overwhelmed – which one to choose? Which one would work best for me? What parameters should I pay attention to?

Sure, most of those YouTube MP4 converter for Mac will eventually do their job – and you get your MP4 video on your hard drive. The only difference is how much of time and effort it will require. So if you prefer to do it in an optimal way that will get you the best result, read on. We will try to figure out what actually makes a good YouTube to MP4 downloader Mac users will enjoy using.

We personally have tried a whole lot of YouTube to MP4 converters and selected the best 5 – check out which one suits you best.

Airy

Airy

Airy is a versatile software tool that enables you to download videos from YouTube on your Mac. It features a really nice clean UI that will certainly be appreciated by Mac users. Its functionality is equally minimalistic – only a couple of options, and that is exactly what you need, don’t you?

Start with downloading the application, once you install it, you can access it directly from your Launchpad. Open the app and copy-paste the URL into its address bar and press Download. The app will also ask you to specify in which format and resolution you would like to download a video. Choose what you need keeping in mind what device you will use for playing it back, e.g. minimal resolution would be good enough for mobile devices, better resolution will look better on a bigger screen and so on. Apart from MP4, supported formats include FLV (Flash video), 3GP and MP3 formats.

Airy is powerful enough to download several videos at a time, note though that your download speed depends on your connection. The app can be used as a standalone application or as a browser plugin, choose what works best for you.

Replay Media Catcher Application

Replay Media Catcher is a powerful application that enables you to download online videos from any web site. It also gives you an option to choose a format and resolution of download. Moreover, it allows you to optimize downloaded videos for playing them back on various devices – be it smartphones, tablets, desktops, gaming systems, etc.

The app’s functionality earned it Bronze Reward of Top Ten Reviews in the category of video downloader software.

Pros:

★ Powerful yet easy-to-use app.

Cons:

★ Support options offered do not seem to be adequate.

★ Expensive – more than USD 79.

Total Video Downloader Application

This app is developed by eTinysoft specifically to download online videos. That is the only thing the app does, that is why we call it the simplest YouTube to MP4 converter – not only in our review but perhaps in the entire market.

The software actually looks like an Internet browser and it has shortcuts to access popular video sharing sites – YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion. Once you navigate to any of these web-sites, you can choose the video you need to save and click Download. You will need to confirm your action by clicking in a dialogue box displayed.

Pros:

★ Downloads videos from practically any web-site

Cons:

★ Does not allow to convert or optimize videos you have already downloaded

Xilisoft

This YouTube to MP4 converter not only looks good, but also works well. It is known for its stability and excellent quality of conversion. It might take a while though to learn how to use its functionality. The app allows downloading multiple videos simultaneously, you can pause, restart and cancel each of downloads. One thing you need to know about Xilisoft is that you have to set the output file format before initiating the download.

Pros:

★ Capable of performing multiple downloads at a time

★ Supports several media formats.

Cons:

★ No subtitles support in Mac version of the app

Jaksta

Jaksta is a compact software tool that can automatically save YouTube videos to your hard drive while you are surfing the Internet. You only need to specify what output format you would like your videos to be saved in. When you are browsing YouTube, for example, the app will notify you of the new video added to the download queue. It will also let you know when the conversion is over.

The app does a lot of stuff without asking your opinion, and while some users are happy about it, others might find it irritating.